The five main Stormont Assembly parties took part in round-table talks
with US diplomat Richard Haass for the first time today [Friday,
September 20th] as part of discussions to deal with parades, flags and
justice issues.

It is the first time since he arrived in Belfast that Mr Haass has met
all the Six County Executive parties together.

This week’s talks are the first of four intensive blocks of meetings
scheduled to take place each month between now and Christmas. DUP leader
Peter Robinson has said he did not expect that all the issues would be
cut and dried by then.

But earlier this week Mr Haass said the end of December’s final block of
monthly talks is a “firm deadline”. He said his current visit to the
north was to focus primarily on information gathering.

“I do not see this first set of meetings in September as a negotiating
round or as an attempt to bridge differences,” he said.

“I am hoping that by the end of this trip and certainly by the end of
the October trip - these first two rounds of talks - that I, and we,
have an incomparably better sense of the issues and the politics behind
them. That will then allow us to pivot and to move forward and to
essentially narrow the differences and come up with the consensus.”

Mr Haass, who was a peace envoy to Ireland during George Bush’s
presidency in 2001-03, said his recommendations would be tabled before
the end of the year -- but insisted that finding a solution to the
issues under discussion lay with the parties.

“We can work for it, but we cannot by ourselves make it happen,” he
said.

“It is up to local leaders in the community; in the society and in the
political process to be willing to put forward their ideas; to accept
compromise and to try to recommend to their respective constituencies
and supporters to accept and support those compromises.”

Mr Haass said he was willing to meet all groups, including loyalist
protestors and Sinn Fein, but he would not say if contact would be made
with other republican groups.

Although originally suggesting he would address segregation in housing
and education as part of his multi-party ‘panel’ process, he later ruled
that out, saying it was “still part of the reality” in the North.

The talks took place on the eve of a major march by loyalists through
Belfast city centre. Up to 5,000 loyalists will march through Belfast
city centre this Saturday afternoon [September 21st] after the Parades
Commission allowed the major parade to go ahead. It is set to to pass
Royal Avenue -- where an anti-internment march ended in serious loyalist
rioting in August -- and Woodvale Parade, near the loyalist encampment,
before possibly attempting to force its way into the nationalist Ardyone
to complete the rerouted sectarian march from July 12th.

Elsewhere, sectarian disturbances and acts of violence have continued
since the summer. A Catholic church in County Antrim was damaged after
loyalists hurled a petrol bomb and white paint at its front door. The
brickwork of St Mary’s Star of the Sea Church on the Shore Road,
Newtownabbey was damaged in the attack, the fifth of its kind this year.

An Orange Order Hall in Drumahoe, County Derry, was robbed of two
banners and a painting, and sprayed with graffiti. Nationalist youths
were blamed for that incident, as well as another incident in which
‘RUC’ [police] was sprayed on the wall of a Sinn Fein office in Derry
city.

Amid low expectations for the talks, SDLP leader Alasdair McDonnell said
the current talks process needs to match the ambition of 1998’s Good
Friday Agreement.

“It is time to deepen the values and comprehensively advance the
unfinished work of the Good Friday agreement. It is time to further
transform our politics and the lives of our people,” he said.

Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness described the talks as “crucially
important”. And he said it “beggars belief” that politicians had failed
to agree to build a peace centre on the former site of the Long Kesh
prison camp.

During a lecture at the Warrington peace centre in England, Martin
McGuinness said that the events of the past had “tripped us up.. how we
speak about it, how we present it and how we address it. And its role in
reconciliation.”

Last month DUP leader Peter Robinson said his party had withdrawn its
support for a centre at Long Kesh following a Sinn Fein commemoration
for two IRA Volunteers in County Tyrone.

Mr McGuinness said unionist fears the building would become a ‘shrine’
to the IRA had been exploited.

“The exploitation of this fear has only been possible because of our
collective failure to address the past,” he said. “And in hindsight we
should have known better.”

The Sinn Fein politician was speaking in Warrington by Colin Parry, the
father of Tim Parry, one of two boys who tragically died in a 1993 IRA
armed campaign in England.

Speaking this evening as he prepared to fly back to the US, Mr Haass
said there was “a real chance” the current talks process could succeed.

“But, that is just that - a real chance is not a guarantee. Obviously it
depends upon the willingness of some people to make some tough decisions
and then defend them.”